


Fearless Love

by annabeth



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Yuri Plisetsky, Angst, Christmas Gift Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, M/M, Vikturio, relationship breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 17:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth/pseuds/annabeth
Summary: "He's gone, Yurio," Viktor says.





	Fearless Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Icicle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icicle/gifts).



> Written for Icicle... this took forever to get out, but once I really got going, I wrote 2200 words so fast I didn't even realize I'd written that much.
> 
> Merry Christmas, lovely! Sorry it's late. ;___;
> 
> Encouraged by my lovelies [Blownwish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Blownwish) and [Ashii Black](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ashiiblack)! Thank you so much, darlings!

"He's gone, Yurio," Viktor says. He's perched on Yuri's stoop as if he doesn't belong there, but Yuri sighs and opens the door wider.

"What are you talking about, old man?" Yuri demands, even as Viktor steps into the house and the light and Yuri gets his first good look at him. Viktor's hair is longer than it's been in years, and a disheveled mess. His clothes, usually immaculate—Viktor is a diva, he doesn't do disordered—are wrinkled. They don't even match; he's wearing two different shoes. In the light, Yuri can spy tiny lines on Viktor's face that definitely weren't there before.

Tears are running down his face and he subsides onto the couch like water flowing from a pitcher. Like his bones have turned to water. Yuri shuts the door and stands awkwardly in his own front hall. It isn't as if he hasn't seen Viktor at his worst before—seen him cry, and rail, and throw things. Viktor's never hidden any of his drama from Yuri, probably because he always considered Yuri too little to matter. But now Yuri is nineteen and Viktor is _here_ , at his house, obviously looking for something.

"Okay, seriously. What the fuck?" Yuri tramps over to the couch and puts his hands on his hips, arms akimbo, and stares down at the rumpled heap that used to be the legendary Viktor Nikiforov. "He's gone? Gone where? Who?"

"Yur—io," Viktor mumbles, and Yuri can now smell the vodka clinging to his breath and clothes. He smells like he drank the nearest liquor store. Not just the vodka, either. Maybe the entire thing.

"Okay, you can sleep it off in the spare bedroom," Yuri says. He leans down and hoists Viktor up by the armpits, then arranges him against his body with one arm over his shoulders and hauls him towards the bed.

"Can I stay here?" Viktor asks hopefully, though his blue-green eyes are nearly entirely blue and completely glassy.

"I just said you could, old man," Yuri says. He tugs him, but Viktor's heavy as fuck. "What the fuck, did you eat all the katsudon in Japan?" he asks, as they make their ungainly way down the hall.

"Naaaah," Viktor mumbles, "Yurio, I need to stay… _awhile_."

Yuri comes to a halt, and Viktor slips down a little, causing him to adjust his grip. This is not what he wanted to hear. Somewhere deep inside, fifteen-year-old Yuri bemoans the fact that he wanted this man, and this man wanted _the other Yuuri_. Yuri stomps on his old crush.

"Why, Vitya?" Yuri asks, and resumes dragging him towards the bed. He gets him there, and it's nearly impossible to get him onto the bed because Viktor's beyond helping. He's also crying again, but not the noisy, dramatic sobs of his younger years, when he wanted _everyone_ to know he was upset. These tears are silent and reek of desperation. Yuri leaves him just long enough to get a bucket from beneath the kitchen sink, just in case—better to be prepared—and settles by the bed.

Then Yuri finds himself crawling onto the bed beside Viktor. He turns Viktor onto his side and towards the open side of the bed—and the bucket—then curls up against the wall. He puts his hand on Viktor's shoulder and when Viktor starts crying hard enough that his body shakes all over, Yuri remembers that's what Viktor always did: put a hand on Katsudon's shoulder. He pulls his hand back.

"You do have to tell me what's going on," Yuri says. Viktor sniffles.

"Yuuri left me," he says, choking up a little. Yuri rubs his back and hopes Viktor doesn't puke. He really didn't sign up for this, though Viktor is his friend. That's all it is now, right?

"What? What are you talking about? He's _obsessed_ with you."

"That's just it," Viktor says miserably. "He didn't want the man who farts and snores and eats like a pig. He wanted a silver-haired perfection that didn't have any room to breathe. I loved him _so much_ , Yurio, but he didn't give me any room to breathe. I was too… intense for him. He didn't like how strong my feelings could get." Viktor stops and swallows.

"I don't get it." Yuri really doesn't, either. "You both seemed so happy?"

"Cameras," Viktor says. He doesn't need to add anything to that; Yuri understands. "But at home… it's almost a relief." Viktor falls silent, his body still, and Yuri thinks he's asleep. But then Viktor inhales loudly. "I'll miss him forever. But he said he just… he said he's loved Phichit all this time."

"What the fuck?" Yuri doesn't mean to shout, and he watches Viktor flinch and winces. "How could he be in love with Phichit? Was he cheating on you?"

"No. His explanation was that he thought he'd wanted me for years, and all the while in Detroit, Phichit was right there. And he didn't even realize he'd been in love until after we got together."

Yuri had always wondered why Viktor and Yuuri kept postponing the wedding date. _After the next competition._ Or _When Yuuri wins gold at the Olympics_.

Now the answer seems to be _never_.

"And he just… shit, Vitya, did he kick you out? You bought that fucking house!" Yuri is infuriated. He wants to punch that chickenshit pig.

"He didn't. I chose to leave. I've got some bags in the car, but, Yuri, I've got no place else to go. Chris is too far away and his husband doesn't like me much." Yuri rolls his eyes and doesn't say out loud that Chris's husband knows something went in between Chris and Vitya once. "I knew you lived alone and… and… fuck, I know I'm taking advantage, Yuri, but I've known how you felt about me for years. So I just thought…"

"All right, okay, shut up, old man," Yuri says. "It'll be okay. Just go to sleep."

Viktor's body shifts like he's going to say something else.

"You can stay," Yuri adds, and when Viktor starts snoring, Yuri thinks, _of course that's fucking annoying, but that's the whole point of love, you live with the shit you don't like for the sake of the love you have for the other person._

Yuri drifts in and out of sleep, listening for those snores, to make sure they continue and that Viktor doesn't aspirate on his own vomit.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, the snoring stops and Yuri jolts awake. Viktor's body is stiff by his, but he doesn't seem to be in distress.

"I'm gonna remember this," Viktor says into pre-dawn gloom.

"Yeah, okay," Yuri says, because he _knows_ Viktor's memory—or lack thereof—is as legendary as he is. Even the media knows about it.

"I'm serious." Viktor rolls over to look at him. He's slightly more sober and he's not crying. "I'm gonna remember that you took care of me. I'm too old to be forcing this shit on you, but you didn't throw me out like you should have."

"Because I love you, you idiot," Yuri says. He hopes Viktor won't remember that confession once he's completely sober. "I always have. Since you told me you'd choreograph my program when I was twelve, though I admit back then it was more hero worship than—"

"Don't," Viktor says. "Don't worship me."

Yuri understands why Viktor wouldn't want that, now. But he smiles and sweeps his hair off his face. His fine features are like beautiful, perfect architecture.

"I don't," he says, calmly. "Not anymore. You beat it out of me the year I was fifteen and you threw me over for Kat—Yuuri. Everything I did that year was to get your attention. Your lack of it towards me beyond a condescending older brother role was enough to change my mind." _But I still love you_ , Yuri thinks.

"I will remember…" Viktor says, before his breathing slows. Yeah, he won't, Yuri knows that, and he's used to it. Viktor never remembers or keeps his promises.

He's not perfect that way. He starts to snore again and Yuri just lies there listening for awhile. How could Yuuri possibly have not seen the fragile humanity in this man, the things that made him less of a god and more of a person deserving of love?

How could Yuuri do it?

++

**Two Years Later**

This time, the knock on the door isn't that much of a surprise. What is the surprise is that Viktor would come back so soon after he just moved out on his own again. He hasn't even returned his key—though he seems to have forgotten that.

Yuri sighs and undoes the latch. Viktor slams the door open and throws himself into Yuri's arms, knocking them both backward against the wall.

"I can't leave," he says breathlessly. "I'll miss your cookie-pancake breakfasts. Your noxious health food shakes. Your two a.m. stretching and practicing sessions when you move all the furniture. Oh, Yura."

"What the fuck are you doing, you old goat?" Yuri asks, but his heart throbs at the diminutive. He tries to push Viktor back, but Viktor just clings tighter, his pelvis rotating against Yuri until something _else_ gives a throb. Shit.

"I'll miss your screech every time you cut yourself shaving. Your dinners that too often have runny eggs. Your adorable way of trying to hide the vodka from me. Yura, I love you."

Now this is news. Of course Viktor loves him—but this doesn't sound like _that_. It sounds like something else. Something serious.

"Fuck, seriously, Vitya—"

Viktor cuts him off with a quick kiss, but it's square on the mouth.

"I said I'd remember. Yura, do you still love me? Not worship, and not like a child, but like—"

Yuri grabs Viktor's hips and pulls him into him, hard. Hard enough that Viktor can feel every hard thing Yuri's feeling, from the clatter in his heart and ribcage to the pounding in his stiff cock. He plants a kiss on Viktor's lips that begins as an assault, a rough-around-the-edges attempt at proof before he softens it, and they melt together, the door still wide open, spring air flowing into his foyer.

They kiss and kiss, like fucking teenagers, and Yuri is twenty-two, now, even he's too old for this but…

They stumble back against the wall, then Viktor helps Yuri walk backward till they reach the couch and collapse onto it.

Viktor breaks the kiss at last.

"I don't just remember you letting me live here for two years, Yura," he says, completely earnest. "I remember you holding my hair back when I puked for an hour. I remember you putting me back to bed even though I smelled foul but I couldn't stand up straight for a shower. I remember you holding me throughout the night, and the circles under your eyes the next morning that told me you didn't sleep to make sure I didn't die. Yura, _I remember_. I remember you said you loved me. And I remember all those times I got drunk afterwards and you just kept taking care of me like you really did love me. It… made an impression." Viktor kisses him again, but it's brief.

Yuri can't believe his own ears.

"Fuck you," he says, summoning a weak, pathetic echo of a laugh. "You sound like an idiot."

"Are you sorry?" Viktor asks, and he's not laughing. He's serious, his face—shit, he's _worried_. Yuri loses the desire to make fun of him—if it was ever there in the first place. He touches the tiny scar by Viktor's left eyebrow, the one from skating, the one he's sure Yuuri never took the time to notice. The scar that mars the perfection. A little piece of the giant Viktor mural that's missing, and therefore all the more beautiful for it. Viktor's been on a thousand posters. He's been airbrushed a million times.

Yuri has never loved a scar more. He kisses Viktor, firmly.

"I love you, old man. God, yes. Stay here and I'll make you a shake."

Viktor leans down so their foreheads are touching.

"Say you won't leave me," Viktor whispers, so achingly vulnerable. For a year he's been wild, reckless, in the news all the time, happy as he wants everyone to believe. He's over Yuuri—but the wounds Yuuri left may never fully heal.

"I can't promise you that, Vitya," Yuri says truthfully. How can anyone promise that? "But I will always love _you_ , farts, snoring, pimples, and all—everything."

"Kiss me again," Viktor says. "Prove it to me. Then say you'll be mine. That I don't have to move out."

"I'll marry you in a hot minute," Yuri says, and then he does as he's told.

It may just be the best kiss of his life, but the best part is, it's the first kiss of hopefully a many-thousand more of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://helm-puppet-trash.tumblr.com)!


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